Tell your kids to pretend they’re a superhero. This strategy, popularized in the media as “the Batman effect,” is a distancing strategy that is particularly useful for children grappling with intense emotions. Ask them to pretend they’re a superhero or cartoon character they admire, and then nudge them to refer to themselves using that character’s name when they’re confronting a difficult situation. Doing so helps them distance.

How To Provide Chatter Support To Others

Humanity has grappled with the phenomenon of the inner voice since the dawn of civilization. Early Christian mystics were thoroughly annoyed by the voice in their head always intruding on their silent contemplation. Some even considered these voices demonic. Around the same time, in the East, Chinese Buddhists theorized about the turbulent mental weather that could cloud one’s emotional landscape. They called it “deluded thought.”

Demons And Delusions?

Although the inner voice functions well much of the time, it often leads to chatter—the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather than a blessing. This often happens precisely when we need our inner voice the most—when our stress is up, the stakes are high, and we encounter difficult emotions that call for the utmost poise.

Chatter - A Blessing And A Curse

Address people’s emotional and cognitive needs. When people come to others for help with their chatter, they generally have two needs they’re trying to fulfill: They’re searching for care and support, on the one hand (emotional needs), and concrete advice about how to move forward and gain closure, on the other (cognitive needs). Addressing both of these needs is vital to your ability to calm other people’s chatter. Concretely, this involves not only empathically validating what people are going through but also broadening their perspective, providing hope, and normalizing their experience.

But the instruments necessary for reducing chatter and harnessing our inner voice aren’t something we need to go looking for. They are readily available, waiting for us to put them to work. The key to beating chatter isn’t to stop talking to yourself. The challenge is to figure out how to do so more effectively.

The Key To Beating Chatter

If you’ve ever silently repeated a phone number to memorize it, replayed a conversation imagining what you should have said, or verbally coached yourself through a problem or skill, then you’ve employed your inner voice. Most people rely on and benefit from theirs every day. And when they disconnect from the present, it’s often to converse with that voice or hear what it has to say—and it can have a lot to say.

But I Don’t Talk To Myself! 

As naturally as we breathe, we “decouple” from the here and now, our brains transporting us to past events, imagined scenarios, and other internal musings. This tendency is so fundamental it has a name: our “default state.” It is the activity our brain automatically reverts to when not otherwise engaged, and often even when we are otherwise engaged.

Our “Default State”

And yet many of these very same ancient cultures believed that their inner voice was a source of wisdom, a belief that undergirds several millennia-old practices like silent prayer and meditation. The fact that multiple spiritual traditions have both feared our inner voice and noted its value speaks to the ambivalent attitudes to our internal conversations that still persist today.

Or Gods And Wisdom?

In his book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, And How To Harness It, Ethan Kross, professor of psychology and management, experimental psychologist, neuroscientist and writer, reviews the different tools that exist for helping people resolve the tension between getting caught in negative thought spirals and thinking clearly and constructively. Below are several tools that you might try out to help calm your own chatter and to provide chatter support to others.

A Book On Chatter

Imagine advising a friend. One way to think about your experience from a distanced perspective is to imagine what you would say to a friend experiencing the same problem as you. Think about the advice you’d give that person, and then apply it to yourself.

How To Calm Your Own Chatter

Reinterpret your body’s chatter response. The bodily symptoms of stress (for example, an upset stomach before, say, a date or presentation) are often themselves stressful, worsening your chatter and then getting worse from it. When this happens, remind yourself that your bodily response to stress is an adaptive evolutionary reaction that improves performance under high-stress conditions. In other words, tell yourself that your sudden rapid breathing, pounding heartbeat, and sweaty palms are there not to sabotage you but to help you respond to a challenge.

The flow of words is so inextricable from our inner lives that it persists even in the face of vocal impairments. Some people who stutter, for example, report talking more fluently in their minds than they do out loud. Deaf people who use sign language talk to themselves too, though they have their own form of inner language. It involves silently signing to themselves, similar to how people who can hear use words to talk to themselves privately.

The Inner Voice Is A Basic Feature Of The Mind

Engage in mental time travel. Another way to gain distance and broaden your perspective is to think about how you’ll feel a month, a year, or even longer from now. Remind yourself that you’ll look back on whatever is upsetting you in the future and it’ll seem much less upsetting. Doing so highlights the impermanence of your current emotional state.

Sometimes this chatter takes the form of a rambling soliloquy; sometimes it’s a dialogue we have with ourselves. Sometimes it’s a compulsive rehashing of past events (rumination); sometimes it’s an angst-ridden imagining of future events (worry). Sometimes it’s a free-associative pinballing between negative feelings and ideas. Sometimes it’s a fixation on one specific unpleasant feeling or notion. However it manifests itself, when the inner voice runs amok and chatter takes the mental microphone, our mind not only torments but paralyzes us. It can also lead us to do things that sabotage us.

The Many Forms Of Chatter And Its Results

You’ve no doubt noticed your own mind wander, as if of its own volition, when you were supposed to be focusing on a task. We are perpetually slipping away from the present into the parallel, nonlinear world of our minds, involuntarily sucked back “inside” on a minute-to-minute basis. In light of this, the expression “the life of the mind” takes on new and added meaning: much of our life is the mind. So what often happens when we slip away?We talk to ourselves.And we listen to what we say.

The Life Of The Mind

Some of the most important conversations in our lives are the ones we have with ourselves. And conversations can break us as much as they can make us.

Our inner voice functions well much of the time, but it can also lead to chatter—the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn introspection into a curse. Here are strategies for breaking that cycle, both in yourself and when supporting others.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Personal Development

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Mental Health

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Communication

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Science & Nature

How to Channel Your Mind’s Inner Chatter

When your self-perception changes in response to a leading question.Example: You call in sick from work, and your boss asks, “How did you get COVID?”

Suggestibility

Doing a favor for someone else makes us more likely to do more versus returning a favor they did for us.Example: You didn’t like Brad at first, but after he asked for your advice, you've been looking for more ways to help him.

Ben Franklin Effect

Insisting that real memories are just figments of your imagination.Example: Bill thinks he’s created the perfect slogan, forgetting that he heard it on TV.

The overestimation that only good things will happen.Example: “It can only get better from here!”

The overestimation that only bad things will happen.Example: “It can only get worse from here!”

Pessimism Bias

We call others out for biases while insisting we have none.Example: “I’m not biased; you are.”

Blind Spot Bias

Believing a random event is more or less likely to happen based on preceding events. Example: The roulette ball landed on black the last four times, so you decide to put everything on red.

Gambler’s Fallacy

We spend inordinate amounts of time and effort on trivial issues while ignoring the ones that matter.Example: The mayor devotes an entire committee to keeping the sidewalk clean but does nothing to help the homeless.

Law of Triviality

We tend to recall interrupted tasks more than completed ones.Example: Despite earning perfect marks in his annual company review, Bill fixates on that one project he dropped the ball on and feels guilty every time he comes to work.

Zeigarnik Effect

Our tendency to see patterns in randomness.Example: “That cloud looks like a rider on horseback.”

Clustering Illusion

Collective beliefs grow stronger the more people parrot them.Example: A study linking vaccines to autism (despite being disproved) compels many to avoid them altogether.

Availability Cascade

We tend to value things more when we have a part in their creation.Example: “Isn’t this a beautiful coffee table? I put it together myself!”

IKEA Effect

We would rather nip small risks in the bud even when another strategy would mitigate overall risk.Example: You opt for that sugar-free soda, not realizing the artificial sweeteners it contains might actually be worse for you.

Zero-Risk Bias

Remembering things differently from how they actually happened.Example: You insist that the Monopoly man has a monocle.

We’re reluctant to pivot from a strategy in which we’ve already invested so much time and energy.Example: You keep watching the movie or reading the book even though it sucks.

Sunk-Cost Fallacy (aka Escalation of Commitment)

The tendency to put our faith in authority figures.Example: “The President said it, so it must be true!”

Authority Bias

We perceive time differently when under stress or trauma.Example: “When the robber pulled a gun on me, everything seemed to stop.”

Tachypsychia

We take comfort in consistency and see any disruption as a burden.Example: Despite being in a toxic relationship, Jack doesn’t want to go through the trouble of breaking up (and going on first dates again).

Status Quo Bias

The tendency to interpret the same information differently depending on context.Example: You perceive wine as better tasting when it’s served in a crystal glass versus a plastic cup.

Framing Effect

We fall back on surface-level beliefs about a group instead of looking at individuals within that group.Example: “That guy with the tie-dye T-shirt must be a pothead.”

Stereotyping

We view our ingroups as diverse and outgroups as all the same.Example: Brad doesn’t own a gun and assumes anyone who does has violent tendencies.

Outgroup Homogeneity Bias

The power of the mind to bring about the desired effect from an ineffective treatment.Example: In a clinical trial, 80% of those who took a sugar pill reported signs of improvement.

Placebo Effect

Focusing on successes and ignoring failures.Example: You assume entrepreneurship is easy because all you see are successful founders in magazines.

Survivorship Bias

We are less likely to intervene in a bad situation when there are more people around.Example: Everyone just watched instead of calling 911 when the bar fight turned ugly.

Bystander Effect

We think nostalgically about the past and see the world going downhill from there.Example: “Back then, we never even thought about locking our doors!”

Declinism

This is the second part of 50 cognitive biases, as tweeted by Elon Musk. These are a must read for understanding human behaviour, including our own.

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Technology & The Future

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Problem Solving

25 More Cognitive Biases, As Tweeted By Elon Musk

In the past, there was an exclusive emphasis on vertical thinking (logic or mathematics). Vertical thinking is linear, logical and produce the final solution from a series of accurate statements.  Vertical thinking is useful, but sometimes we need to think outside the box. When vertical thinking is not getting you anywhere, you should switch to lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is important when constructing strategies or challenging old ways of dealing with a problem.

The need for lateral thinking

Brainstorming is very effective to solve a problem creatively. Sharing ideas in a constructive environment will likely lead to an innovative solution. <ul><li>Share ideas in a non-judgmental manner.</li><li>Highlight the dominating ideas and explore them further.</li></ul> Another method is the reversal technique. It's based on the idea that you can change your perspective when you change the order of the words or the question. For example, "the parents are educating their kids' or "the kids need to be educated by their parents".

Brainstorming and the reversal method

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.

<ul>
<li>Vertical thinking is the traditional type of thinking where one moves forward by sequential steps and where each step must be justified.</li>
<li>Lateral thinking is the process of generating new ideas. It teaches you how to look at a problem from a different angle and challenge your thinking patterns to produce better ways of solving a problem.</li>
<li>Vertical thinking is very useful for analysing facts, numbers and data. Lateral thinking is useful to solve unique problems that require innovative thinking.</li>
</ul>

Vertical thinking vs lateral thinking

<ul>
<li>Create alternatives: More choices create better solutions.</li>
<li>Question your assumptions.</li>
<li>Quotas: Generate ten ideas a day. The more you do this, the better you will become at it.</li>
<li>Analogies: Make connections between the current situation and a similar situation.</li>
<li>Fractionation: Break something down into its components, then rebuild it.</li>
<li>Random stimulation: Put yourself into new environments outside your comfort zone, such as a conversation with someone with different views or going to unfamiliar locations.</li>
<li>Identify the main point of a book, conversation, video.</li>
<li>Brainstorm.</li>
<li>Entertain unattractive ideas.</li>
</ul>

Train your lateral thinking

These hacks help you face a situation that “everybody knows” how to solve

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Books

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Teamwork

Think Outside The Box

Using lateral thinking for solving problems creatively

The first practical explanation of how creativity works, this results-oriented bestseller trains listeners to move beyond a "vertical" mode of thought to tap the potential of lateral thinking.

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Productivity

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Philosophy

“This could be a very useful book for teachers and non-teachers alike. Dr. DeBono does not claim to be able to turn us all into Miltons, Davincis, and Einsteins…but his techniques provide an alternative to just sitting around waiting for the Muse to appear. The Muse never appears to most of us—hence the value of this book.”— David Cohen, Times Educational SupplementThe first practical explanation of how creativity works, this results-oriented bestseller trains listeners to move beyond a “vertical” mode of thought to tap the potential of lateral thinking“The underlying argument of the book is that there are two kinds of thinking—vertical and lateral. Most of us are educated to think vertically, to go from one logical step to the next, moving all the time towards the one correct solution of our problem. We are not usually educated to be creative, to generate idea after idea….“Dr. DeBono argues that the function of vertical, logical thinking is to argue what is wrong. It is a very useful way of thinking, but it is not the only useful way. To claim it is, is the sort of intellectual arrogance that makes creative thinking unlikely….

Edward De Bono is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Edward De Bono has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Edward De Bono's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Edward De Bono

Lateral Thinking

Shock learning is learning that contradicts knowledge that you already have. That’s the kind of learning that generates innovationIf you don’t ignore or resist the unexpected, this “shock” can give you insights to enable you to take advantage of a major change in the marketplace or guard against a serious reversal.

Shock Learning

Learning is the minimum requirement for success. Information and knowledge about everything are increasing every day, and so must your knowledge in order to keep up.The most successful people read an average of 2-3 hours per day. And they are always on the lookout for new information that can help them to be more effective in what they do.

The Importance Of Lifelong Learning

Knowledge is the primary source of value in our world today. Your ability to expand your mind and devote yourself to lifelong learning is the key to breaking any success barriers that may be in front of you.

Dedicate Yourself To Continuous Education

It is the kind of learning that adds new knowledge and skills to your repertoire. With growth learning, you’re acquiring new information that enables you to do things that you could not do previously.You can discover great ideas by listening to podcasts, reading blogs, and reading books.

Growth Learning

Maintenance learning refers to you keeping current with your field.Reading an occasional book and keeping current with blogs and newsletters is not equivalent to adding to your education. Maintenance learning involves a higher frequency of slightly challenging studying and practice that keeps you prepared to begin to tackle the new challenges of your field but doesn’t make you proficient on them.

Maintenance Learning

Your ability to expand your mind and strive for lifelong learning is critical to your success. By dedicating yourself to learning, you can get ahead in every aspect of your life. All it takes is a commitment. The most successful people read an average of 2-3 hours per day.

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Habits

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Learning & Education

Discover the Importance of Lifelong Learning

Think of growth as a cycle — successfully perform, get feedback, and perform again even better. Experiences power that growth cycle, so you’ll want to understand which experiences matter most and gain as many of them as quickly as possible.Two key steps to grow faster are:<ul><li>Determine your from/to.</li><li>Get the experiences and create a personal experience map.</li></ul>

Think of growth as a cycle 

The research is clear about how we grow most successfully: it’s a combination of on-the-job, social, and formal learning, also known as the 70-20-10 model. This research-derived mantra says that roughly 70 percent of your professional growth will come from the work experiences you have, 20 percent will come from your interactions with others, and 10 percent will come from formal education.

The 70-20-10 model

Use the from/to framework - two brief statements — one describing where you are today and one describing your next big (not your ultimate) destination.
Examples of great from/to statements include:
<ul>
<li>From an individual contributor who adds value through technical expertise and closely follows others’ directions, to a people leader who creates a clear strategy and delivers results through a small team.</li>
<li>From a business strategist who can appear aloof and dismissive of those with less intellectual horsepower, to a general manager who aligns and inspires her region through personal connections.</li>
</ul>

Determine your From/To

Select four to seven functional experiences and three to four management experiences you believe will benefit you most and list them on your personal experience map. The map should be focused and realistic — a reference sheet that you’ll use regularly to plan your growth and assess your progress.The personal experience map is now your guide to continuously grow your high-performing self. Creating it will be one of your best investments of time. Review the content of your map any time you switch jobs or companies and at least every six months to ensure that it remains a current, helpful guide.

Create your personal experience map

A personal experience map shows which experiences you want to acquire in the next two to five years to grow your career. It’s a practical planning document that describes how you will produce the highest-performing you.There are two types of experiences that will accelerate your development:<ul><li> Functional experiences help make you great at something, i.e. marketing, supply chain, R&D. They allow you to prove that you’re highly competent at what you do. </li><li>Management experiences will help you prove that you can perform or manage in a variety of challenging situations.</li></ul>

How to Channel Your Mind’s Inner Chatter

25 More Cognitive Biases, As Tweeted By Elon Musk

Lateral Thinking

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

Discover the Importance of Lifelong Learning

CURATED BY

How to Channel Your Mind’s Inner Chatter

25 More Cognitive Biases, As Tweeted By Elon Musk

Lateral Thinking

It's time to Read like a Pro.

Discover the Importance of Lifelong Learning

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.